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Hillary Clinton's own Bill of rights

CHARLESTON, S.C.–If he was not always a constant husband, back when, he is surely the most alluring spouse and surrogate campaigner now.

The "Bill Factor" – Hillary's Bill – is a provocative element confounding to strategists in opposing camps: He's as charismatic as Barack Obama, as earnest as John Edwards and more tactically astute than anyone on the Republican side of the registry.

Bill Clinton is running for nothing. Yet he is leading the pack on a merry chase as he stumps for the White House, one conjugal degree removed from the Democratic nomination.

In South Carolina – a state that he won in the '92 primary – this son-of-the-South ex-commander-in-chief is still so powerful a force that Hillary Clinton can step away from the fray, as she has this week, while staying very much in proxy play.

For the past two days, a tireless Bill has been sub-thumping around the Palmetto State, in venues small and large, pulling out all the tricks of oratory, overtly appending his personal record to his wife's resumé, and putting Obama on the grumbling defensive.

America's first "black president," as he was famously tagged for his appeal to that huge constituency, is charged here with holding as much of that support as possible, against a real black contender, while also stiffening women voters perchance torn between the conflicting narratives of race and gender.

"It's almost like an embarrassment of riches," Clinton told an audience yesterday, of this historic choice in presidential nominees, adding humorously: "Can't we have done this in some order?"

He came to a honky-tonk at the ratty end of Charleston's main street, Hugers Restaurant, speaking for almost two hours to precisely 74 voters in what had been advertised as a first-come-first-seated event, arriving earlier than expected and staying far longer than planned, pressing back the flesh that pressed against him, endlessly charming and tactile.

"In the Afro-American community, he's like Marvin Gaye," enthused one black admirer, 28-year-old Eric Elliott, who livened proceedings considerably when he stood to ask a question following Clinton's half-hour delivery of policy platforms, as per the missus, from health care to mortgage foreclosures to the Iraq war.

"One question I know a lot of people want to ask is: In the Hillary Clinton administration, will Bill Clinton be there? And if he is there, what will he do?"

Plenty of people, within the Democratic party, too, have been wondering just that very thing, many leery of a Bill Clinton cult that cuts both ways.

That way, some worry, lies the potential for atrophy, yesterday's man co-opting today's political scene, because nobody's quite certain whether this will help or hinder Democrats reclaiming the Oval Office.

He's not the elected pol anymore, Clinton reminded. First Spouse will be fine with him and Hillary will wear the pants in that White House.

"Make no mistake about it. She will be the president. I will not be in the cabinet; that is not lawful. I will not be in a full-time staff job; that is not wise."

An eminence silver and a source for consultation, but not a usurper of executive authority, not part of a tandem presidency, because Hillary doesn't need a puppeteer for the purpose of governing a nation.

"She has to have a strong vice-president, a strong secretary of state and a strong cabinet. Therefore, they need to know, on the front end, that I'm not going to be big-footing them.

"But I will be there. I would do for her what she did for me."

Of course, if Hillary should summon him for a specific job, he'd serve, as he did when called upon by both George Bushes, in diplomatic or crisis-resolution capacity.

Thus far, Clinton insists, Hillary has discussed with him only the possibility of mobilizing a group of "distinguished Americans" from both sides of the aisle, those who disagree with Washington's foreign policy as crafted in the past eight years, "to go into the rest of the world and say, `We're back.'"

Bill Clinton has, obviously, a legacy of his own to defend and has increasingly shown a willingness – especially in recent weeks, when the Obama camp has tried to defuse his influence – to fight a campaign on two Clinton fronts.

He's been the heavy, on occasion, and accused of wilfully invoking a dirty feud with Hillary's main rival, the kind of politics that oh-so-virtuous Obama professes to abhor, though he is certainly engaged of late.

Yesterday, though, Clinton focused on the smearing of his wife by factions of the other party while extolling the woman's toughness under assault.

"If you remember, the right wing of the Republican party beat the living daylights out of her for the eight years that I was president.

"She has to live with the smears and the slimes and the stuff that people have put on her. I don't know how many other people have taken the kind of whippin' she's taken."

Of course, some might say she took a lot of that whippin' – euphemistically speaking – from him.

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